Indian Speaker

Sriram is the Vice President of Products at Quintype. In this role, he leads product management and is responsible for defining the strategic direction and execution for all the products from Quintype. Prior to Quintype, Sriram has served multiple roles in product / delivery management functions across organizations such as Thoughtworks, Barclays and Citibank for more than a decade. He holds a Master’s degree in Management from BITS, Pilani.

Pankaj, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, GoNews, is a print and broadcast journalist with more than three decades of editorial and management experience in print and electronic media across three continents. He has worked in Delhi, London, Boston and Hong Kong with leading news organisations such as NDTV, BBC World Service (UK), Public Radio International (US), India Today, and The Sunday Observer. In March 2017 he launched India’s first app-based TV News Channel, GoNews, and turned into a pioneering entrepreneur. The app integrates latest global internet and broadcast technologies to provide video news on mobile handsets. Pankaj has been Communications Advisor to former Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh while he was in office.

Meghnad is a public policy professional and a die-hard Parliament nerd. When he is not watching Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV obsessively, he spends his time poring over legislation, trying to simplify them on Twitter and writing columns about them using GIFs. He hosted a series to simplify the working of the Indian government called “Consti-tuition” with Newslaundry. He is a former LAMP fellow, a fellowship run by PRS Legislative Research and has worked with multiple MPs across party lines for the past seven years.

Aroon is the Editor-in-Chief and Chairman of the India Today group. He is the managing director of Thomson Press, and serves on the management board of the International Federation of Periodical Publishers (FIPP). In 2001, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan for his stellar contribution to Indian journalism.

Geeta has been with the BBC for more than 20 years and is Women and Social Affairs Editor for BBC Newsonlinein Delhi. She writes news stories and features for the BBC news website and travels through India to report on exclusives. She has worked as a radio producer and correspondent with the BBC World Service and BBC News. Since February this year, she has been working as senior producer putting together ‘Kalki presents: My Indian Life’, a ten-part podcast series by the BBC World Service for India. She worked with several Indian newspapers, including The Pioneer andThe Calcutta Telegraph, before joining the BBC.

Born in Kolkata, Jay moved to Delhi in 1996 and over the years, honed his investigative reportage such that it impacted a number of policy decisions. Currently with The Indian Express, he is part of the global investigations team looking into the Panama and Paradise Papers. In 2005, he exposed the local extinction of tigers in Sariska during his first stint with The Indian Express. Jay has worked with the Amrita Bazar Patrika (Kolkata) and The Sunday Observer (New Delhi). He has been awarded with the Prem Bhatia award, the Commonwealth Press Union prize, and the ACJ Award for investigative journalism.

Seema is the co-founder and editor of The Ken, a subscription-driven digital publication. She has over two decades of experience in journalism. Before starting The Ken, Seema wrote Myth Breaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech, published by HarperCollins in May 2016. Prior to that, she was a senior editor and bureau chief for Bangalore with Forbes India, before which she wrote for Mint. Seema is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MacArthur Foundation Research Grantee.

Dinesh is an award-winning journalist and author with over 30 years of experience in reporting on science, environment and health for national and international media, including the medical journal, The Lancet. Currently, he is the Managing Editor of India Science Wire (ISW). His latest book The Outsourcer: The Story of India’s IT Revolution (MIT Press, 2015) won him the Computer History Museum Book Prize for 2016. His book on public policies relating to health – Know Your Heart – The Hidden Links Between Your Body and the Politics of the State – was widely acclaimed.

Mumbai-based Vivek was born and brought up in Ranchi. After a chequered journey in academics across disciplines, he landed up in journalism and found his true calling. He has worked at senior positions with the DNA and The Economic Times. He has also written four books. India’s Big Government—The Intrusive State and How It Is Hurting Us, his fourth book, was published in January 2017. He is also the author of the Easy Money trilogy, a series of three books on the history of money and banking, and how that caused the financial crisis of 2008. His writing has also appeared in The Times of India, The Hindu, The Hindu Business Line, Business World, Business Today, India Today, Mid-Day, Business Standard, Forbes India, and on websites such as Firstpost, Huffington Post, The Quint, Business-Standard, Scroll, Newslaundry and the BBC.

Vinod is a full-time Member at NITI Aayog (National Institute of Transforming India). He has been a member of the faculty at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, for over three decades and Head of Department of Paediatrics for several years. Apart from being an eminent neonatologist, Vinod has contributed to India’s national programmes on reproductive and child health, and on nutrition. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the global Every Newborn Action Plan. Vinod holds positions in multiple international fora on child health, has been a co-chair of the Board of the Global Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and a member of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Child and Maternal Health. A well-known published researcher, he is a recipient of the prestigious Dr B.R. Ambedkar Centenary Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research by ICMR and the Public Health Champions Award by WHO.